PyPy on Windows¶
PyPy is supported on Windows platforms, starting with Windows 2000. The following text gives some hints about how to translate the PyPy interpreter.
PyPy supports only being translated as a 32bit program, even on 64bit Windows. See at the end of this page for what is missing for a full 64bit translation.
To build pypy-c you need a working python environment, and a C compiler. It is possible to translate with a CPython 2.6 or later, but this is not the preferred way, because it will take a lot longer to run – depending on your architecture, between two and three times as long. So head to our downloads and get the latest stable version.
Microsoft Visual Studio is preferred as a compiler, but there are reports of success with the mingw32 port of gcc.
Translating PyPy with Visual Studio¶
We routinely test the RPython translation toolchain using Visual Studio 2008, Express Edition. Other configurations may work as well.
The translation scripts will set up the appropriate environment variables for the compiler, so you do not need to run vcvars before translation. They will attempt to locate the same compiler version that was used to build the Python interpreter doing the translation. Failing that, they will pick the most recent Visual Studio compiler they can find. In addition, the target architecture (32 bits, 64 bits) is automatically selected. A 32 bit build can only be built using a 32 bit Python and vice versa. By default pypy is built using the Multi-threaded DLL (/MD) runtime environment.
Note: PyPy is currently not supported for 64 bit Python, and translation will fail in this case.
Python and a C compiler are all you need to build pypy, but it will miss some modules that relies on third-party libraries. See below how to get and build them.
Please see the non-windows instructions for more information, especially note that translation is RAM-hungry. A standard translation requires around 4GB, so special preparations are necessary, or you may want to use the method in the notes of the build instructions to reduce memory usage at the price of a slower translation:
set PYPY_GC_MAX_DELTA=200MB
pypy --jit loop_longevity=300 ../../rpython/bin/rpython -Ojit targetpypystandalone
set PYPY_GC_MAX_DELTA=
Preping Windows for the Large Build¶
Normally 32bit programs are limited to 2GB of memory on Windows. It is possible to raise this limit, to 3GB on Windows 32bit, and almost 4GB on Windows 64bit.
On Windows 32bit, it is necessary to modify the system: follow http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=9583842&linkID=9240617 to enable the “3GB” feature, and reboot. This step is not necessary on Windows 64bit.
Then you need to execute:
editbin /largeaddressaware translator.exe
where translator.exe is the pypy.exe or cpython.exe you will use to translate with.
Installing external packages¶
On Windows, there is no standard place where to download, build and install third-party libraries. We recommend installing them in the parent directory of the pypy checkout. For example, if you installed pypy in d:\pypy\trunk\ (This directory contains a README file), the base directory is d:\pypy. You must then set the INCLUDE, LIB and PATH (for DLLs) environment variables appropriately.
Abridged method (for -Ojit builds using Visual Studio 2008)¶
Download the versions of all the external packages from https://bitbucket.org/pypy/pypy/downloads/local_2.4.zip (for 2.4 release and later) or https://bitbucket.org/pypy/pypy/downloads/local.zip (for pre-2.4 versions) Then expand it into the base directory (base_dir) and modify your environment to reflect this:
set PATH=<base_dir>\bin;<base_dir>\tcltk\bin;%PATH%
set INCLUDE=<base_dir>\include;<base_dir>\tcltk\include;%INCLUDE%
set LIB=<base_dir>\lib;<base_dir>\tcltk\lib;%LIB%
Now you should be good to go. Read on for more information.
The Boehm garbage collector¶
This library is needed if you plan to use the --gc=boehm translation option (this is the default at some optimization levels like -O1, but unneeded for high-performance translations like -O2). You may get it at http://hboehm.info/gc/gc_source/gc-7.1.tar.gz
Versions 7.0 and 7.1 are known to work; the 6.x series won’t work with pypy. Unpack this folder in the base directory. The default GC_abort(...) function in misc.c will try to open a MessageBox. You may want to disable this with the following patch:
--- a/misc.c Sun Apr 20 14:08:27 2014 +0300
+++ b/misc.c Sun Apr 20 14:08:37 2014 +0300
@@ -1058,7 +1058,7 @@
#ifndef PCR
void GC_abort(const char *msg)
{
-# if defined(MSWIN32)
+# if 0 && defined(MSWIN32)
(void) MessageBoxA(NULL, msg, "Fatal error in gc", MB_ICONERROR|MB_OK);
# else
GC_err_printf("%s\n", msg);
Then open a command prompt:
cd gc-7.1
nmake -f NT_THREADS_MAKEFILE
copy Release\gc.dll <somewhere in the PATH>
The zlib compression library¶
Download http://www.gzip.org/zlib/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz and extract it in the base directory. Then compile as a static library:
cd zlib-1.2.3
nmake -f win32\Makefile.msc
copy zlib.lib <somewhere in LIB>
copy zlib.h zconf.h <somewhere in INCLUDE>
The bz2 compression library¶
Get the same version of bz2 used by python and compile as a static library:
svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/bzip2-1.0.6
cd bzip2-1.0.6
nmake -f makefile.msc
copy libbz2.lib <somewhere in LIB>
copy bzlib.h <somewhere in INCLUDE>
The sqlite3 database library¶
PyPy uses cffi to interact with sqlite3.dll. Only the dll is needed, the cffi wrapper is compiled when the module is imported for the first time. The sqlite3.dll should be version 3.6.21 for CPython2.7 compatablility.
The expat XML parser¶
Download the source code of expat on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/ and extract it in the base directory. Version 2.1.0 is known to pass tests. Then open the project file expat.dsw with Visual Studio; follow the instruction for converting the project files, switch to the “Release” configuration, use the expat_static project, reconfigure the runtime for Multi-threaded DLL (/MD) and build.
Then, copy the file win32\bin\release\libexpat.lib somewhere in somewhere in LIB, and both lib\expat.h and lib\expat_external.h somewhere in INCLUDE.
The OpenSSL library¶
OpenSSL needs a Perl interpreter to configure its makefile. You may use the one distributed by ActiveState, or the one from cygwin.:
svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/openssl-1.0.1i
cd openssl-1.0.1i
perl Configure VC-WIN32 no-idea no-mdc2
ms\do_ms.bat
nmake -f ms\nt.mak install
Then, copy the files out32\*.lib somewhere in somewhere in LIB, and the entire include\openssl directory as-is somewhere in INCLUDE.
TkInter module support¶
Note that much of this is taken from the cpython build process. Tkinter is imported via cffi, so the module is optional. To recreate the tcltk directory found for the release script, create the dlls, libs, headers and runtime by running:
svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/tcl-8.5.2.1 tcl85
svn export http://svn.python.org/projects/external/tk-8.5.2.0 tk85
cd tcl85\win
nmake -f makefile.vc COMPILERFLAGS=-DWINVER=0x0500 DEBUG=0 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk clean all
nmake -f makefile.vc DEBUG=0 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk install
cd ..\..\tk85\win
nmake -f makefile.vc COMPILERFLAGS=-DWINVER=0x0500 OPTS=noxp DEBUG=1 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk TCLDIR=..\..\tcl85 clean all
nmake -f makefile.vc COMPILERFLAGS=-DWINVER=0x0500 OPTS=noxp DEBUG=1 INSTALLDIR=..\..\tcltk TCLDIR=..\..\tcl85 install
Now you should have a tcktkbin, tcltklib, and tcltkinclude directory ready for use. The release packaging script will pick up the tcltk runtime in the lib directory and put it in the archive.
Using the mingw compiler¶
You can compile pypy with the mingw compiler, using the –cc=mingw32 option; gcc.exe must be on the PATH. If the -cc flag does not begin with “ming”, it should be the name of a valid gcc-derivative compiler, i.e. x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc for the 64 bit compiler creating a 64 bit target.
You probably want to set the CPATH, LIBRARY_PATH, and PATH environment variable to the header files, lib or dlls, and dlls respectively of the locally installed packages if they are not in the mingw directory heirarchy.
libffi for the mingw compiler¶
To enable the _rawffi (and ctypes) module, you need to compile a mingw version of libffi. Here is one way to do this, wich should allow you to try to build for win64 or win32:
Download and unzip a mingw32 build or mingw64 build, say into c:mingw
If you do not use cygwin, you will need msys to provide make, autoconf tools and other goodies.
- Download and unzip a msys for mingw, say into c:msys
- Edit the c:msysetcfstab file to mount c:mingw
Download and unzip the libffi source files, and extract them in the base directory.
Run c:msysmsys.bat or a cygwin shell which should make you feel better since it is a shell prompt with shell tools.
From inside the shell, cd to the libffi directory and do:
sh ./configure make cp .libs/libffi-5.dll <somewhere on the PATH>
If you can’t find the dll, and the libtool issued a warning about “undefined symbols not allowed”, you will need to edit the libffi Makefile in the toplevel directory. Add the flag -no-undefined to the definition of libffi_la_LDFLAGS
If you wish to experiment with win64, you must run configure with flags:
sh ./configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32
or such, depending on your mingw64 download.
hacking on PyPy with the mingw compiler¶
Since hacking on PyPy means running tests, you will need a way to specify the mingw compiler when hacking (as opposed to translating). As of March 2012, –cc is not a valid option for pytest.py. However if you set an environment variable CC to the compliter exe, testing will use it.
What is missing for a full 64-bit translation¶
The main blocker is that we assume that the integer type of RPython is large enough to (occasionally) contain a pointer value cast to an integer. The simplest fix is to make sure that it is so, but it will give the following incompatibility between CPython and PyPy on Win64:
CPython: sys.maxint == 2**32-1, sys.maxsize == 2**64-1
PyPy: sys.maxint == sys.maxsize == 2**64-1
...and, correspondingly, PyPy supports ints up to the larger value of sys.maxint before they are converted to long. The first decision that someone needs to make is if this incompatibility is reasonable.
Assuming that it is, the first thing to do is probably to hack CPython until it fits this model: replace the field in PyIntObject with a long long field, and change the value of sys.maxint. This might just work, even if half-brokenly: I’m sure you can crash it because of the precision loss that undoubtedly occurs everywhere, but try not to. :-)
Such a hacked CPython is what you’ll use in the next steps. We’ll call it CPython64/64.
It is probably not too much work if the goal is only to get a translated PyPy executable, and to run all tests before translation. But you need to start somewhere, and you should start with some tests in rpython/translator/c/test/, like test_standalone.py and test_newgc.py: try to have them pass on top of CPython64/64.
Keep in mind that this runs small translations, and some details may go wrong. The most obvious one is to check that it produces C files that use the integer type Signed — but what is Signed defined to? It should be equal to long on every other platform, but on Win64 it should be something like long long.
What is more generally needed is to review all the C files in rpython/translator/c/src for the word long, because this means a 32-bit integer even on Win64. Replace it with Signed most of the times. You can replace one with the other without breaking anything on any other platform, so feel free to.
Then, these two C types have corresponding RPython types: rffi.LONG and lltype.Signed respectively. The first should really correspond to the C long. Add tests that check that integers cast to one type or the other really have 32 and 64 bits respectively, on Win64.
Once these basic tests work, you need to review rpython/rlib/ for uses of rffi.LONG versus lltype.Signed. The goal would be to fix some more LONG-versus-Signed issues, by fixing the tests — as always run on top of CPython64/64. Note that there was some early work done in rpython/rlib/rarithmetic with the goal of running all the tests on Win64 on the regular CPython, but I think by now that it’s a bad idea. Look only at CPython64/64.
The major intermediate goal is to get a translation of PyPy with -O2 with a minimal set of modules, starting with --no-allworkingmodules; you need to use CPython64/64 to run this translation too. Check carefully the warnings of the C compiler at the end. By default, MSVC reports a lot of mismatches of integer sizes as warnings instead of errors.
Then you need to review pypy/module/*/ for LONG-versus-Signed issues. At some time during this review, we get a working translated PyPy on Windows 64 that includes all --translationmodules, i.e. everything needed to run translations. Once we have that, the hacked CPython64/64 becomes much less important, because we can run future translations on top of this translated PyPy. As soon as we get there, please distribute the translated PyPy. It’s an essential component for anyone else that wants to work on Win64! We end up with a strange kind of dependency — we need a translated PyPy in order to translate a PyPy —, but I believe it’s ok here, as Windows executables are supposed to never be broken by newer versions of Windows.
Happy hacking :-)